


We grew lost (we were found)

by pr_scatterbrain



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Medical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 12:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/913045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pr_scatterbrain/pseuds/pr_scatterbrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re half way across the city when the call comes in: a bar fight near West Raleigh.</p><p>An Off Beat/Kammerflimmern fusion where Semin is a paramedic, and Eric is Eric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We grew lost (we were found)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Rae, Emily and Sarah for all your help and advice with this thing. <3 
> 
>  
> 
> tw: suicide of a oc/minor character.

 

 

 

They’re half way across the city when the call comes in: a bar fight near West Raleigh. Apparently some college kids had a punch up of sorts. Matt Bradley swears. Sasha doesn’t know why Matt bothers. There are always calls like this on Friday night. Fuck. There are always calls like this any given night.

“Pace yourself, old man,” Sasha tells him as Matt flicks on the sirens.

Matt ignores Sasha. But he always does.

 

 

All things considered, Sasha doesn’t mind bar fights. They usually arrive afterward when the broken glass is being swept up and the music has restarted. They’re better than domestic calls where women with bruised faces shake or roadside accidents where the flash of blue and white police lights make Sasha’s iridescent paramedic uniform glow in the darkness.

There are a scattering of people waiting for them as Matt pulls up outside the pub. The fight is over but drunk and stupid they act like it isn’t. Tensions are high as Matt and Sasha get out of their ambulance, but it’s mostly false posturing. No one is seriously hurt – one guy has glass in his hand, another has a minor gash on his head. Nothing that requires a trip to the local emergency room. 

Sasha ends up stitching up the gash victim.

“You done this before?” the guy asks as Sasha cleans up the blood off his face.

His eyes are blue but clear, Sasha thinks as he nods absently.

The guy grins. “Good, good. I don’t want an amateur.” 

There is blood on his teeth. It makes him look savage, almost. Sasha looks for a beat.

“What’s your name?”

“Jordy.”

Sasha should have figured. Popped collar, blonde hair and the arrogance of youth; of course he’s called Jordy. Guys like him are always called names like Jordy. With steady hands, Sasha finishes stitching up Jordy’s forehead. The stitches are small and tight. Jordy’s lucky. It probably won’t scar.

“You done?” Matt asks.

“Yeah,” Sasha tells him. “Let’s go.”

 

 

The night is young in a roundabout way.

The radio flickers to life. Nicky’s in charge of the switchboard tonight and it’s his calm voice that guides them to a hit and run, a dehydrated girl who collapsed at a rave, an allergic reaction, and a local vagabond the police want them to pick up. All one after the other.

Matt makes a face. He hates it when the police call them to do their work.

“What? Like they can’t pick Old Gabby up?” he complains.

The police do pick people like Gabby up. That’s part of the problem. They arrest him for ‘loitering’ or ‘vagrancy,’ or ‘drunk and disorderly’ but that doesn’t help, especially not in winter. Tonight Gabby can’t ‘move along.’  Slumped over onto the pavement, he grunts when Sasha checks his vitals and almost vomits when Sasha and Matt get him onto his feet.

“Don’t you dare,” Matt warns him as they get him into the back of the ambulance.

Gabby mutters something indistinct in response and falls asleep on the way back to Rex Hospital. He’s not that bad really. He snores, but so does Matt.

Gabby doesn’t wake until they dump him in the tank with the others.

 

 

(No. Sasha doesn’t mind bar fights).

 

 

Tonight Sanja is working in the emergency room. His scrubs are bright yellow and his hair is pushed away from his face with a black elastic he must have stolen from one of the female nurses. 

“Good timing,” Sanja grins. “The weather looks like it’s going to turn soon. Morning rush, if you know what I mean.”

Sasha doesn’t. But that isn’t news. It isn’t even funny anymore.

“Long night, Syoma?” Sanja drawls as Sasha signs off.

Sasha doesn’t answer. Sanja doesn’t need one. Leaning over the nurse’s counter, he talks shit in Russian about the other nurses and doctors on duty. He’s awful really. But honestly Sasha’s probably worse; he laughs at Sanja’s jokes.

 

 

Afterwards, Sasha rides his bike home. No one is on the roads yet.  The city feels empty; he knows better to think it is, but it feels that way, at least on the surface.

Drifting from lane to lane as he makes his way across the city, it’s early when Sasha finally gets home. 

His neighbour has their TV on. The sounds of morning cartoons drift through the walls. His answering machine flashes with new messages. His sister again. But she can wait. Will wait. Pulling his uniform off, he crawls into his unmade bed and sleeps.

While he sleeps, he dreams.

Blue eyes and split lips and gentle hands. He’s had the same dream for as long as he can remember.

 

 

In the afternoon Sanja comes over. Sasha doesn’t know when Sanja sleeps. Maybe he doesn’t. He’s still wearing the same scrubs from before, but he’s lost the headband. The skin under his eyes is dark, but his grin is sharp and full of his usual excess of charm.

Over cereal and coffee, he pulls a yellow bottle out from his jacket pocket.

“What’s your poison?” he asks, rattling the pills.

Sasha eyes Sanjai’s offerings. “I’m working tonight.”

“So am I.”

Chewing on a mouthful of soggy cornflakes, Sasha thinks about taking a raincheck. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Sanja makes a face. “You’ve been working all week.”

Sasha has. He should have been rostered off duty two days ago. But Nicky badly twisted a nerve in his back and is out of action. They’re all trying to pick up the slack until he’s cleared to return to active duty. Sanja sighs and picks out a white pill for Sasha.

“This will keep you awake.”  

Looking at it, Sasha considers the night ahead of him: Saturday night in Raleigh when Duke University’s basketball team is playing University of North Carolina. It’s not the Hurricane’s facing the Oilers in the playoffs, but it is a grudge match which means more than one idiot is going to do something stupid.

“You’re going to need it,” Sanja tells him knowingly.

Sasha is. He lets Sanja slip it into his pocket before Sanja leaves.

 

 

No one ever wants to work Saturdays.

Monday is worse though. Monday is so much worse.

Afterwards, afterwards, afterwards – Sasha stands on the fire escape until Matt gets him.

“You can’t win them all,” he says like that is something to say and then he buys Sasha lunch and there is a next call and one after that and when Sasha gets home it’s late and the news doesn’t have a report about the girl who Sasha failed to help.

 

 

The next day, Sasha is rostered off duty. He goes in anyway.

“Shit, Syoma, didn’t someone call you?” Sanja says.

“No, yeah, they did,” Sasha manages to say because someone did call him to tell him not to come in but –

“I need a favour.”

A name. He wants her name.

He saw her in the drunk tank, he saw her left on stretchers in the emergency ward, he walked past her on his way into and out of the Rex. Night after night, she was part of the background of his life. One of the many faces; a sigh, a sound, a slip of colour and shape. But he doesn’t know her name. He talked to her. He tried to make her step back from the edge. He saw her jump.

He wants her name.

Sanja looks at Sasha, and Sasha wishes he wouldn’t. Sasha doesn’t want to beg, but he will.

“No. Fuck. Okay,” Sanja says.

Sanja is on the front lines just like Sasha. Sasha tries to remember that as he waits for Sanja while he disappears into the nurses’ station to make some calls. Closing his eyes, he tries. Fuck. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to do. 

 

 

Sanja gets Sasha a name.

Afterwards Sasha can’t figure out if knowing it makes things better or worse.

 

 

When Sasha falls asleep in the evening, he doesn’t except to dream of anything – he hopes that he won’t. But when he finally does succumb to sleep, he dreams of blue eyes watching him and kind hands stilling him.

‘Shhh,’ he is told. ‘Sleep.’

It is a comfort and it is cruel. When Sasha wakes, he wakes on the verge of tears.

 

 

Matt and Sasha go back to work. But they get rostered a full rotation of day shifts. Everyone knows why, but Sasha figures he shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

 

 

Matt is fucking one of the doctors. One of the ones down in the morgue; Troy Bouwer. It’s one of many things Sasha isn’t meant to know and that he and Matt don’t talk about.

On Sasha’s first day back on the job, he remembers getting into the ambulance and Matt lighting him one of the doctor’s hand rolled cigarette and slotting it in between Sasha’s lips.

“Head in the game,” Matt said and Sasha remembers nodding in agreement. Head in the game.

Back then, they must have seemed like a good match. Sasha with his test scores and Matt with his exemplary track record. Maybe they might have actually been a success story if Sasha lived up to his supposed potential. There are worse things, Sasha knows, than unfulfilled potential.  He is a good paramedic; he is proud of that if nothing else. Matt’s a good paramedic too. He probably could have been better if Sasha gave him more to work with but it’s not like either of them can know that for sure.

 

 

Tonight when they head out, Matt doesn’t say anything as Sasha gets into the ambulance. But Matt doesn’t talk to Sasha much anymore.

(He does talk about Sasha though).

 

 

Towards the end of the shift, they get a call to pick up a kid with a suspected broken or fractured leg. Without an x-ray, Sasha can’t know for sure. He is pretty sure it’s the latter, rather than the former but he doesn’t want to take any chances.

The kid’s mother sits in the back of the ambulance with Sasha. Sasha doesn’t looks at her – that’s what the training told him to do. Keep his eyes on the patient. But he finds his eyes drifting to their linked hands.

He hasn’t been home for months. He won’t be able to visit until the spring at the earliest. His parents understand; coming from a family of professionals they would. But they’re in Russia and he isn’t. They don’t understand that. But then again, they don’t really understand why he’s a paramedic rather than a doctor.

 

 

While Sasha and Matt are dropping off the kid and his mother at Rex’s emergency room, Matt gets called away to discuss something with one of the department officials. Sasha is thankful for the reprieve. It’s the small things, really.

In the staff change rooms, Sasha showers alone and tries to wake up. It doesn’t work. The steam just makes him feel slow and unsteady on his feet. He probably shouldn’t ride home but he does anyway. It’s his own fault when he misjudges a corner and hits the curb. Toppling over, manages to get his legs tangled up in the bike chain.

Sanja drops by after work to laughs at Sasha’s grazed knees.

“Shut up,” Sasha tells him.

Sanja refuses.

Pushing Sasha’s hands away, Sanja cleans and disinfects Sasha’s grazes and then pours a shot into Sasha’s cup of tea.

“Medicinal,” Sanja smiles.

“Maybe to you,” Sasha grumbles, but he doesn’t mean anything with it. Sanja knows.

Sitting down in front of Sasha’s TV, Sanja proceeds to tell Sasha all about his night since Sasha left Rex before Sanja got the chance to. Honestly, Sasha didn’t really miss out on much. Sanja is a gossip and a liar and a sleaze who likes to hit on ER patients. He says as much and Sanja snorts.

“So cruel,”

“But true,” Sasha says, because it is.

Sanja isn’t a bad person.  Sasha probably is though.

Sanja has been trying to get Sasha to move in with him for months. There are worse ideas than being roommates with him. But when Sanja is like this, Sasha can’t remember any of them. That’s the trouble.

 

 

(At night, Sasha dreams of drowning. At the last second he is saved by strong arms that pull him from the waves).

 

 

The roster of day shifts gives way to late night and early morning shifts. They wash over Sasha, touching the edges of him but nothing more. During one of them, he returns to the Rex and is in the nurses’ station filing some overdue paperwork when looks up to find familiar blue eyes watching him from one of the beds.

For a beat, Sasha freezes.

“Hey,” he – Sasha knows those blue eyes - says.

“Hey,” Sasha echoes.

The guy smiles a little.

“You okay?” Sasha asks because – it’s the ER.

The guy shrugs. “Yeah, yeah. I’m just waiting to get your stitches removed from my brother’s head.”

And – Sasha blinks. Blinks and refocuses to see someone sitting next to him.

“Jordy?” Sasha tries; his memory has never been great, but he thinks he remembers this.

 “I actually prefer Jordan,” Jordy says.

“Don’t listen to him. It’s Jordy,”

“Shut up Eric,” Jordy whines.

Sasha can’t help himself; he laughs. Putting aside his timesheets, he finds himself offering to remove Jordan’s stitches.

“You don’t have to,” Eric says.

“No, it’s okay. I can do it. I don’t mind.”

He can do it. He doesn’t, usually. But they don’t know that. Don’t have to know that.

Jordy – Jordan – is quieter without liquor cursing through him. He holds himself differently.

“I’m not normally like that,” he tells Sasha as Sasha pulls on a pair of plastic gloves.

Sasha nods. Maybe Jordan isn’t. Maybe he is. Maybe Jordan didn’t start the fight. Maybe just got caught in the crossfire. There are worse things to believe than the best in people.

Not that Sasha believes in much.

Eric’s eyes are such a familiar blue. Close up to him, Sasha finds himself taking his time.

 

 

Eric turns up the next day.

“I wanted to thank you,” he says when Sasha finds him waiting outside the Rex’s ambulance garages.

“Yeah?” Sasha asks.

Guys like Eric don’t thank guys like Sasha.

Eric grin, sly and crocked. “And I wanted to walk you home.”

Sasha looks at Eric. And okay. “Okay.”

 

 

Sasha has had the same dreams for as long as he could remember.

And now there is Eric, with those blue eyes and those hands and when he walks Sasha home, he stops at the front of Sasha’s building and –

“You said you wanted to walk me home,” Sasha says because he’s waited all his life and now, here Eric is.

“I did,” Eric tells him.

“So walk me home,” Sasha tells Eric.

 

 

Eric looks so good in Sasha’s unmade bed.

Sasha thinks Eric should stay in it. Eric laughs when Sasha tells him that.

“Make me,” Eric says, bold and beautiful and –  

And Sasha does.

 

 

Sasha doesn’t know guys like Eric.

A hometown hero. A hockey all-star. An Olympian with a gold medal to prove it. The sort of guy who is made for TV.

Sasha presses kisses against the line of Eric’s neck and hides them behind his ear, in his hair. Sasha has known Eric long before Sasha didn’t know about guys like Eric.

 

 

In the morning Sasha gets up and in the shower Eric falls to his knees and blows him swift and dirty and leaves bruises on Sasha’s hips when Sasha’s knees give out and he has to hold Sasha up.

“Fuck,” Sasha sobs.

Undone, Sasha gasps for breathe.

(He never gets it back).

 

 

After work, Eric takes Sasha to a friend of a friends place. They’re having a party to celebrate the upcoming season. There is beer and music and Sasha sticks out like a sore thumb. The sanitised medical smell doesn’t wash off. Sometimes Sasha thinks his parents brought it back from work with him and embedded it into his skin when he was a child. Sometimes he thinks they made him into who he is and nothing can undo that. 

Around his friends, Eric is different. Quieter; he chooses his words sparingly. They all listen to him though.

Over beer and hamburgers, Cam is introduced as Eric’s best friend. Sasha is introduced as the guy who patched up Jordan after he pulled a Kaner.

Sasha thinks he should mind.

But Cam takes one look at Sasha and smirks. “Another one, Eric?”

Eric shoves him away, laughing. “Fuck off.”

 

 

One of Cam’s cousins dog’s has just has a litter of pups. 

Soft and sweet, they press their noses against Sasha’s palm and wag their tails.

“Have one,” he offers.

 Sasha shakes his head, but he leaves with one anyway.

Eric grins. “You’re a soft touch, aren’t you?”

 

 

At work, Sasha takes the puppy and gives it to Sanja.

“Syoma? What the fuck?”

Sasha ignores him. Sasha is already running late and the night hasn’t even started yet. Matt gives him shit about it when Sasha turns up. But Matt’s life wouldn’t be complete if he wasn’t giving someone shit about something.

 

 

The following day, Sasha and Matt arrive back at Rex’s in time to attend the staff briefing Dale Hunter is holding in the hospital garage. Apparently it’s looking like Nicky will be out for a while yet.

“We’re going to need to continue with the reworked the roster,” Dale Hunter explains.

It’s bad news. They’re already pulling overtime hours. It was only meant to be temporary. But according to Dale, it is to become the norm.

“It’s not like it makes a difference to someone like you,” Matt says when Sasha complains.

And –

It doesn’t. Or it wouldn’t. It’s not like Sasha has a world outside of Rex. Except while he’s heading off, Eric texts him, so instead of riding home Sasha waits outside the back exit of the hospital with the smokers for him.

The Hurricanes are about to start their pre-season training camp. When Eric arrives, he apologises in advance.

“I won’t be around too much,” he says, but he’s smiling and Sasha doesn’t feel worried. Not about this.

Sanja thinks it’s odd; that they’re starting in such different places. It doesn’t feel odd to Sasha. He knows he is new to Eric, but when they’re together it feels less like they are getting to know each other and more like they’re picking up on a conversation they had before they met.

At Eric’s place, Sasha watches him let his dog out into his backyard and feels settled.

“Breakfast?” Eric offers. “Or do you feel like dinner?”

Either would work. Sasha’s internal clock seems constantly half a day behind or ahead of everyone else’s.

They end up eating toast in front of Eric’s TV. It isn’t fancy, but it’s good. Eric is likes to stretch his arm over the back of the couch and when he flicks over to ESPN to watch reruns of old hockey games, he doesn’t mind when Sasha cheers for the Capitals instead of the Hurricane’s.

“Hey, I don’t mind. But if you let me, I’ll try and convince you to give the ‘Canes a chance.”

Sasha doesn’t mind at all.

 

 

Slowly a new pattern begins to take shape in Sasha’s life. Sasha can see it already.

 

 

With Nicky out, Mike Green is left without a partner. Sasha’s never been good in a pinch, but there aren’t many teams willing to split up even on a temporary basis.

When Sasha turns up for their first shift, Mike grins. “What’s the word on the street?”

Sasha opens his mouth, but before he can speak, Matt laughs.

“Don’t ask Semin. He’s a _romantic._ ”

Matt says it like it’s a dirty word.

Mike snorts. “It’s not like you ever know anything.”

Mike is a good guy. Everyone knows it.

When they drive out, Mike turns the radio on and offers to let Sasha pick which station.

Sasha eyes him. “Is this a test?”

Mike grins. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

Mike is a good guy, yes. But he is also a bit of a bastard. That’s why he and Sanja get on so well.

Sasha narrows his eyes. “Driver picks?”

“Got it in one,” Mike laughs and switches over to a station playing Jay-Z but when Sasha groans, Mike flicks through stations until he finds one that they both enjoy.

 

 

They’re an hour into the night when a call comes in sending them to North Raleigh. Mike leads the way up the apartment block. He cuts a path through lobby and corridors in a way that is reminiscent of Matt, but somehow sharper. More dangerous. No wonder he’s Nicky’s partner.

“EMT,” he shouts, pounding on the door to be heard over the music.

When the door begins to open, Sasha pushes past Mike and grabs the door handle to pull it closed, just shutting it before –  

“Put the dog on a fucking leash,” Mike swears.

And it’s another night. This time it’s a guy OD’ing on the floor and the world narrows down to them treating him and stabilising him and getting him to the Rex.

It’s only later, while Mike is driving them back out into the night, Mike turns a little and catches Sasha’s eyes.

“Thanks,” he says. “That was a good catch back there.”

Sasha shakes his head. He didn’t catch anything. Anyone could have heard the dog barking and made the same connection.

Mike rolls his eyes. “Call it whatever you like. Thank you for preventing my ass from getting bitten by a 70 pound pit bull. I’m sure Nicky will thank you too.”

This time, Sasha snorts. “Nicky will tell you, you need to be more careful.”

 This, of all things, makes Mike laugh. “That’s why I have you.”

 

 

The Hurricanes are starting the season on the road.

When Sasha gets off work, he listens to the voice mail message Eric left.

 

 

Bored and feeling stupid, Sasha finds himself dropping in at Sanja’s place.

The puppy Sasha gave Sanja has doubled in size. In Sasha’s absence, Sanja named her Ghera and bought her a diamanté collar.

“Pretty collar for pretty girl,” Sanja grins when they take her for a walk at the local dog park. “My NHL puppy.”

Bounding through the grass, Ghera tugs at her matching diamanté leash, pulling Sanja along after her. In the off leash area, Sanja lets her run around and sniff at the other dogs. From the fence line they sit on an empty bench and watch her make friends.  

“They want me to go back to the Neurology unit,” Sanja says as he fishes a tennis ball out of his pocket.

Sasha turns a little, but Sanja gaze is fixed on Ghera as she dances around a standard poodle.   

 “Do you want to leave the ER?” Sasha asks.

As long as Sasha has known Sanja, he’s thrived in the ER.

Sanja shrugs. “I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet.”

Throwing the tennis ball to Ghera, Sanja sits back into the bench.

“Have you told Nicky about it?”

Sanja makes a face. “I’m telling you.”

“But–”

“I’m telling you,” Sanja repeats, as if it is that simple.

Maybe it is to him. 

When Ghera trots back over to them, Sanja smiles at her and scratches behind her ears.

 

 

Sasha ends up crashing at Sanja’s. Together they watch a weeks’ worth of soap opera episode’s Sanja has on his TiVo and when they crash, Sasha wakes to Ghera sitting next to the guest bedroom bed, her dark eyes solemn as she presses close and slobbers all over him.

 Over breakfast they watch ESPN because Sanja is a dick and when the hosts talk about Hurricane’s prospects for the new season, Sanja smirks.

“He’s pretty. Much prettier than I imaged.”

“Shut up.”

“What?” Sanja laughs. “You have good taste.”

Sasha hates him. He tells Sanja, but that only makes him press a kiss to Sasha’s cheek affectionately before ordering Sasha do the washing up so he can watch the latest Sidney Crosby interview.

“You have no shame,” Sasha tells Sanja quite seriously.

Sanja smirks. “None.”

 

 

Sasha likes working with Mike. The more they get rostered together, the more Sasha finds himself looking forward to each shift.

He makes Sasha listen to the worst music and doesn’t seem to mind that Sasha is nowhere near to Nicky’s equal. They work together easily. It is strange though, that each night before they head out, Mike makes a point of asking Sasha if he’s got a line on what the night is going to bring them.

Sasha might have the equivalent test score of Nicky, but the only thing they’ve ever brought him was Eric.

Eric is more than enough. Far more. But yet, Mike always asks.

It comes to the point where Sasha has to ask, “You’ve talked to Matt, right?”

“Matt is a good paramedic,” Mike allows. “But I don’t think he knows shit about you.”

And –

Sasha doesn’t quite know what to make of that.

 

 

Eric and the Hurricane’s get back into town late, with three wins under their belt and one tie. When he picks Sasha up from work, Eric grins tiredly when he tucks two tickets to the Hurricane’s home stand opening game into Sasha’s pocket.

“Bring a friend and cheer for me. I need all the help I can get.”

That’s a lie. It’s the team the Hurricanes are facing who will need all the help they can get.

Eric smiles though, when Sasha tells him that. “Come anyway. Bring that tall guy who always leers at me when I pick you up.”

Sasha frowns. “If I take Sanja, he’s going to want to come down to the locker room and meet you and Cam.”

Eric smiles. “Bring him. I’ll get the guys to sign something for him.” 

That sounds like an awful idea; knowing Sanja he’ll probably turn up to the game wearing a Pittsburgh Penguin’s jersey and ask Jordan to sign it.

 

 

“I will not wear Pen’s jersey!” Sanja says when he next sees Sasha.

Sasha wrinkles his nose. He hates it when Sanja does that.

 

 

(As it turns out, Sanja doesn’t wear his beloved Crosby jersey, he wears Eric’s instead.

Sasha doesn’t know if that is better or worse.)

 

 

After the game (which the Hurricane’s win in overtime), Eric invites Sasha and Sanja out with the team. Jordan is happy to see them, and while waiting for the bartender to return with the tables order, he pushes his blonde hair off his forehead to show them how nicely his cut has healed.

“Good work,” Sanja nods.

“Too bad about the rest of your face,” Jared smirks like a true baby brother.

Jordan punches him.

It’s fun in a way. Eric’s brothers are loud and gullible. They believe all of Sanja’s horror ER stories and indulge him with all the NHL centric gossip they possess. Sasha excuses himself from the table when Jordan starts regaling Sanja with stories about Crosby. After buying himself a fresh beer, Sasha finds himself talking to Jeff Skinner.

“Why are you called Sasha?” Jeff asks. “That’s a girl’s name. I thought you were a girl.”

He isn’t a teenager anymore, but he looks and sounds like one.

Sasha shrugs. “You can call me Semin instead. Or Alex.”

This only seems to make Jeff more confused.

Over Jeff’s shoulder, Sasha catches Eric smiling at him.

 

 

The longer Sasha works with Mike, the more he forgets that there is an expiration date attached to their partnership.

During their annual evaluation, it comes up.

“Green has mentioned that your grade might need to be adjusted when you return to a regular roster,” Dale mentions when it comes time to track Sasha’s annual PRE-COG development.

Sasha stiffens. Testing isn’t good. Testing means being pulled from duty and having his position at Rex questioned, and possibly endangered.

Dale flips through Mike’s report of their last few shifts.  “He noted three separate occasions where you were able to predict the actions of those involved in emergency calls.”

Sasha can’t help shaking his head.

There is a reason he and Nicky are two of the best Rex has. They can look out into the dark and see. They are Rex’s guiding lights.

Sasha’s never been more than a romantic. Everyone knows that.

“It appears that that is changing,” Dale muses, closing Sasha’s file. “You’re getting re-assessed.  That’s my final word on the topic.”

 

 

Sanja is introspective when Sasha catches him in the nurses break room helping himself to more than his fair share of sweet biscuits and tea.

“You knew, didn’t you?” Sasha asks.

Sanja shrugs. “Yeah. But it’s not like you would have believed me if I told you.”

Scowling, Sasha steals a biscuit from Sanja. “It’s a waste of time.”

“That isn’t true.”

“How would you know?” Sasha spits.

Sanja shrugs. “Same way you know about the dog and the kid’s leg and about me wearing Pen’s jersey, which I was going to wear it until you called and ordered me not to.”

 

 

Sasha doesn’t know. But perhaps that isn’t the point. Not anymore.

 

 

Mike is idling at the traffic lights when Sasha sees Eric and his two brothers leaving a bar. Waving at him, Sasha smiles. Gloriously happy and clearly drunk after a win against the Flyers, Eric is a beacon in the darkness of the night.

Indifferent to the traffic lights – to Mike’s potential ire – Eric jumps up and leans through the window.

“Hello,” he says, pressing his mouth to Sasha.

Breathless, Sasha doesn’t have time to react before Eric pulls back. Grinning, he breaks away as the traffic lights change and go green.

“That boy is trouble,” Mike snorts as he presses his foot on the accelerator. 

He is. But he’s Sasha’s.

 

 

The night is young. But Sasha isn’t. He hasn’t been for a long time now. 

Afterwards, in the change rooms back at the Rex, Sasha thinks of Eric. Thinks of his skin and mouth and the way he is waiting for Sasha.

The night isn’t so dark to Sasha anymore.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Find/follow me on [tumblr](http://www.pr-scatterbrain.tumblr.com) if you want <3


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